Coaxial cell printing of a human glomerular model in vitro of the glomerular filtration barrier and its pathophysiology.

Many efforts have been expended in the emulations of the kidney's glomerular unit because of its limitless potential in the field of drug screening industry and nephrotoxicity testing in the clinics. Herein, we have fabricated a functional bilayer glomerular microvessel-on-a-chip that recapitulates the specific arrangement of glomerular endothelial cell (GE), podocyte layers, and the intervening glomerular basement membrane (GBM) in a single step. Our perfusable chip allows for the coculture of the monolayer glomerular endothelium and podocyte epithelium that display mature functional markers of glomerular cells, and their proper interactions produce GBM proteins, which are the major components of the GBM in vivo. Furthermore, we tested the selective permeability capacity, a representative hallmark function of the glomerular filtration barrier. Lastly, we evaluated the response of our glomerular model to Adriamycin- and hyperglycemia-induced injury to evaluate its applicability for drug screening and glomerular disease modeling.